The Pre-editing Process: Tip #1

Whether you are planning to hire an editor or co-author or ghostwriter, you will invariably save yourself time and money by doing a pre-edit of your own.

What follows is the first of our tips to take you through the pre-editing process to a place where you feel you have gone about as far as you can before entrusting your precious material into professional hands.

However sharp your writing skills, it takes another pair of professional eyes to examine your work more subjectively, and to focus not only on what is right with your material, but also where it falls short. So, while your end goal is to hire an editor to review and revise your material where necessary, you can save time and money by first giving your manuscript the benefit of your own professional eye and insight. You will be amazed at how many places you will find in your text that sound the alarm for “Help!” It’s not an overwhelming task, and you will find it satisfying to zero in on those false steps you took as you were writing that you now have a chance to take back.

The simplest set of problems is the typos. These are not always the result of missed keystrokes, but the fact that your brain generally works faster than your fingers. This is why you sometimes type one particular word when your intention is to type another.

The good news, which bears repeating, is that the hours you will spend doing this initial review of your material represents a reduction in the total cost of hiring an editor.